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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25734685">who purgatoried their torsos...with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolvesandwerewolves/pseuds/Wolvesandwerewolves'>Wolvesandwerewolves</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>I’m With You in Rockland [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bugs and Insects, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, References to Suicide, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia/Schizoaffective Disorder, references to self harm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:47:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,645</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25734685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolvesandwerewolves/pseuds/Wolvesandwerewolves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hallucinations and delusions are Klaus’s childhood best friends and nightmares. They have always been there for him. </p><p>And now they’re imitating his brother.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Klaus Hargreeves &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, klaus hargreeves &amp; ben hargreeves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>I’m With You in Rockland [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865728</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>259</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>who purgatoried their torsos...with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I’m making you guys read (parts of) my favorite poem...one disordered title at a time</p><p>References to self harm, suicidal tendencies and attempts, mental illness and instability, etc.</p><p>Title taken from Howl by Allen Ginsberg (...again)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Klaus was diagnosed with juvenile bipolar psychosis when he was thirteen. It took half a bottle of whiskey, and an entire bottle of pills for him to reach that diagnosis, as well as a four and a half week hospital stay. It took another two years, one and a half weeks in a hospital and an awful fight with Dad for his diagnosis to change to juvenile schizophrenia. </p><p> </p><p></p><div>
  <p>He knows he took pills before that, for anxiety, like Vanya. He thinks they probably helped, but still he heard voices that no one else did, saw figures standing in hallways that weren’t solid enough to touch. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He remembers when he was really small, and all of his imaginary friends were mean to him. They scared him, and not just because they would whisper to him in the dark of night, awful things no seven year old should hear—but also because they looked so terrifying. Their skin was pale and lifeless, eyes hollowed out with dark, creeping shadows like deep, open-set orbits in skulls. They smelled awful, their teeth yellow and dull, fingers black and decaying. Sometimes they left maggots or other bugs behind in their wake, and when Klaus would squish them with a bare foot, he would step only on the cold wooden floors of the mansion.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>He slept with a nightlight in his bedroom, and was scared of the dark even when his siblings teased him for it. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He remembers the nights when it was really bad, when he woke up in sickly damp bedsheets with a strangled scream caught in his throat. Mom would hold him until his broken sobs turned to hiccups, and remake his bed as he got in the warm bath. The steam of the bath would swirl and congregate with his unwilling imagination to form whispery thin ghosts. They would conceal dark figures beneath them, but their voices floated through the thick air and mocked him. And when he got back to his room, with red eyes and fingers pruned, Mom would sing him to sleep and promise the people he saw standing in his closet weren’t actually there.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>He still has nightmares, but he’s older now, and he knows the scary monsters he sees at the foot of his bed are nothing more than his own brain at war, that the disembodied voices he hears aren’t real. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But Klaus wonders if they know that. It doesn’t seem like Ben is aware. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Maybe he should set up an appointment with his psychiatrist. Usually hallucinations don’t stick around this long. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>On the other hand, Ben is so much more mild than what he’s used to. He’s one of the odd visual and auditory hallucinations that allow their voice to be drowned out and swallowed whole by the loud music on his Walkman. If Klaus is tired of him, all he has to do is slip some headphones over his ears, or submerge himself entirely in the bathtub until the world muffles. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Sometimes that doesn’t always work. Sometimes the voices never quiet. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But he’s on medication now, and he’s sober, and he hasn’t had a psychotic break in almost five years. He’s getting better. He is better. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Even if he still sometimes hears things that aren’t there, sees things no one else sees. Even if his dead brother is casually sitting next to him, playing at being alive.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Ben is reading to him. Klaus is lying in bed, thick flannel pajama bottoms too warm and staticky against the hair on his legs. He’s staring up at the popcorn ceiling, creating faces and images where there are none. A cigarette dangles from his fingertips over the edge of the bed, but he has yet to light it. Vanya doesn’t like it when he gets ash on the floor. Or when he smokes indoors. Once he almost caught the sheets on fire. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>His brother is on the bed next to him, sitting up cross legged with his back against the wall. Occasionally his knee will nudge against and pass through Klaus’s shoulder, and on tv ghosts are always cold, but he thinks Ben just feels like nothing. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Well, he’s not really portrayed well in the media, either.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“I hate this book,” Klaus mumbles, even though he’s not really paying much attention. He’s trying hard not to, actually. He closes his eyes. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Next to him Ben takes a deep breath, like he’s trying to calm himself down. “It’s a good book,” he says, slowly and with forced effort. “But more importantly, it’s a book you haven’t read before. Right?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Right,” he agrees airily, waving one hand around. “Why am I reading it now?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“You’re not. I am. It’s something new, which is how you know I’m not a hallucination,” Ben says, and his voice is heavy with practiced patience running thin. “I’m a ghost, Klaus. You can see ghosts.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Klaus nods. He wonders where he read this before and how he knows it. He hums, thoughtfully, and slowly blinks his eyes open again. He turns his head.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“I can see you,” he tells the vision. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Ben is hunched over, now, forehead resting in both hands, elbows on his knees. His fingers disappear into his hairline. But he sighs when Klaus speaks, and lets his hands drop to look him tiredly in the face. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“That’s because I’m right here.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Are you?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Yes!” Ben cries, and he sounds so desperate and exhausted. He doesn’t think Ben when he was alive would ever be this invested in his opinion of him or maybe even anything else. He can’t remember the last time he saw Ben. He thinks they were teenagers. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He shrugs. Moves the cigarette to his lips and digs around in his pocket for a lighter. “Okay.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“You don’t believe me,” Ben says, sighing. He drops his face back in his hands, forlorn. It’s not Ben, but it’s sad.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Sure,” Klaus says, because maybe if he plays along he’ll understand why his subconscious is making his dead brother read a book to him he hardly wants to listen to. Maybe if he plays along, the hallucination won’t be quite as dejected or depressed. He lights the cigarette, breaths in slowly. “You’re right there, aren’t you?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Yes,” Ben says. He straightens his back again, lets his head rest against the wall. His hands fidget with the pages of the book he has in his lap. “And you have never read <em>Frankenstein</em> before.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Oh, is that what we’re reading?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Ben takes another deep breath. He grinds his teeth. “Yes. You know nothing about it.” </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Klaus rolls his eyes. “Everyone knows about Frankenstein.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Okay,” Ben says, carefully. “Did you know that Frankenstein is the name of the scientist, not the monster?” </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Klaus frowns. He shrugs, and Ben takes it as an invitation to keep talking. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Or that it was the first science fiction book ever written? Or that Mary Shelley wrote it when she was eighteen?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Slowly, Klaus shakes his head. Nothing of what Ben is saying sounds familiar to him, at all. He’s not a fan of science fiction, and definitely not horror. But he must know these things on some level, because the image of his brother is telling them to him, and Ben is dead. He’s not really there. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Something like doubt creeps in the back of his mind. Klaus tries to push it away. He doesn’t want this to turn into a delusion. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>So he lies to himself and to the shattered mirror of himself dressed as Ben next to him. He hopes it doesn’t make Ben sad again. </p>
  <p>“Sure,” he says. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“No, you didn’t!” </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Klaus hums. He takes another drag from his cigarette. “I wonder if Vanya’s read <em>Frankenstein</em> before,” he says. Ben groans. “Hey, Ben, if you’re a hallucination, can you read my mind?”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“I’m not a hallucination. Telepathy isn’t one of my powers.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Right.” He wonders if he had powers what they would be. If he could read minds, or move things with his mind. Or if Vanya had powers, what they would be, too. He waits for Ben to answer him, even though he said he’s not telepathic, and when Ben doesn’t he gives up and says it out loud. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“I think you would probably have the ability to see ghosts,” Ben says, dryly sardonic. “I have no idea about Vanya. Maybe you guys should stop taking your pills and then we’ll all find out.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Klaus shakes his head again, breathes in on the cigarette. The last time he stopped taking his pills was right after he and Vanya moved out. He’d convinced himself Dad had only given him the pills to control him, and now that he was out he was free. The imaginary friends he’d had as a child drifted back to him, screamed at him for leaving, called him awful names. He had other visual hallucinations, and once woke up to bugs crawling on him and digging in his skin. The voices told him how to make it stop, and he tried to obey, but instead woke up in a plain white room with only a bed and cameras. He was surrounded by people, some as plain as Ben, pass them by the street without a second look, but others were bloody or bruised like his nightmares. It took sedation and three days for them to fade away, but their voices lingered, and he stayed in the hospital for an entire six weeks.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Vanya picked him up afterwards. He slept on the couch that night, the lights in the kitchen kept on, and she played violin for him as he fell asleep.  </p>
</div><div>
  <p>They were eighteen, then. He was only seventeen when he went to the hospital. He does not remember his eighteenth birthday.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>“No,” Klaus says. “I think that’s probably not a good idea.”</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Beside him, Ben sighs again. He picks up his book and continues reading. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>haha i wrote this at 3 am instead of sleeping, surprise </p><p>no idea what i’ll write of this next but at least I have the title picked out<br/>thanks Allen Ginsberg</p></blockquote></div></div>
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